Sunday, June 24, 2012

MARGARET CATCHPOLE

To celebrate their 30th
year, Eastern Angles have revived one of their greatest hits,
performed for the Millennium in village halls all over their patch.

But this time Margaret
Catchpole has been re-imagined on a more epic scale.

Epic in its design. The
broad arena of the Hush House – a revelation in the site-specific
Bentwater Roads of 2010 – allows us to have a shoreline, with
shingle, and impressive landing stages that do service as smugglers'
boats, and, memorably, as a man'o'war.

Epic in its
performance. We have four musicians, and as well as a cast of six,
the impressive forces of the Community Chorus: no mere
supernumeraries, but real Suffolk characters, including a nicely
nuanced vicar from

Tony Barnard. And some
big set pieces, like the battle and the Harvest Home, with singing
and dancing.

Appropriately for
Olympic year, Alastair Cording's piece celebrates a folk hero and
noted horsewoman, as she struggles between her duty to her father and
to her employers and her "unfortunate fixation" for the
"Freetrader" Will Laud, played with just the right balance
of swagger and sincerity by Francis Woolf.

There's a Dickensian
sense of injustice, of broken hopes, of the harshness of fate, of
lives balanced between good and evil, all well brought out in Ivan
Cutting's production. There's a pleasing symmetry to the dramatic
structure: the urgent knocking at the doctor's door, the desperate
bareback ride. Australia is a leitmotiv, whether as a New Start or as
a penal sentence.

Pete Sowerbutts is
Margaret's father, his life destroyed by her ill-advised liaison, and
also the local doctor, who sees her as a wild child who must be
tamed. Two excellent characterizations.

Her first love, the shy
but determined John Barry is sympathetically drawn by Liam Bewley –
his determination survives as he joins the Revenue Men, sworn enemies
of those who land moonshine at the Sizewell Gap, not least his rival
for Margaret's hand, and his accomplice Luff [Gareth Hinsley].

Margaret herself is
Rosalind Steele, who makes us feel the distress of this remarkable
woman, sharing her joy at reading a letter, her sorrow at her many
setbacks. There's a "cheerful alteration" in her life when
she is taken on by the Cobbolds. Elizabeth [Becky Pennick], wife of
the brewery owner, treats Margaret more like a sister than a servant,
teaches her to read and write, and remains true to her even when her
trusts are betrayed.

This is a fine revival,
well worth schlepping out to remotest Rendlesham for, full of
memorable theatrical triumphs: Margaret's plaintive "Ride the
White Horses", her imagined roan mount, Laud's letter which she
painstakingly reads as he prompts her from across the ocean, and the
final tableau, the whole company frozen in farewell as our heroine
walks into the infinite exile of the Hush House tunnel.

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About Me

I first wrote reviews for the Essex Chronicle in the early 70s, part of a team led by "Jon Richards". When he stepped down, I took over the organization of the Arts Pages. In 1988 I was succeeded by Mary Redman, though I continued to contribute reviews until the Chronicle stopped carrying regular coverage of amateur performances. Peter Andrews of the Chelmsford Weekly News kindly allowed me to write for his paper. After he retired, his work was continued by Jim Hutchon, who recruited me again to share the load. After Jim died, I continued to provide professional reviews of arts events in and around Chelmsford and Brentwood, until I finally hung up my pen and my word processor in December 2017.
Apart from the newspaper - now The Chelmsford Times - my views have appeared on The Reviews Hub, Remote Goat and Sardines. And of course, all of them were shared on this blog.